News from the glass and refractory ceramics worlds

Published on June 3rd, 2013 | By: Eileen De Guire

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• Turkey’s leading glassmaker Sisecam plans a series of share sales by its publicly traded companies, hoping to attract new long-term investors, with the aim to increase free float. Sisecam is also looking at Pasabahce unit flotation.

• Indo-Asahi Glass, one of the oldest glass manufacturing factories in the country, located in BhadaniNagar, India, is all set to restart production in a few months. The factory was closed since April 2011; both the units of the factory are under process to restart. Power supply and coal linkage would be ready in the next two months. All 1,052 workers will be provided job in the plant as the company has decided to recruit all workers previously engaged with the company.

• Washington Mills will set up a white fused alumina production base in Nanchuan, Chongqing, China, with the annual capacity of 100,000 tons. Bauxite resource in Nanchuan area is abundant, and the proved reserves there were estimated at about 1,200,000 tons.

• PPG Industries announced that it has completed its acquisition of certain assets of Deft Inc., a privately-owned specialty coatings company based in Irvine, Calif. “With the acquisition of Deft, we are now able to offer an even broader portfolio of innovative coatings that benefit our customers and reduce the impact on the environment,” says Barry Gillespie, PPG vice president. “Deft’s waterborne and chrome-free technologies complement PPG’s existing coatings capabilities.”

• The Freedonia Group Inc., an industrial market research firm, forecasts that demand for refractory products in the US will grow at a 3.3 percent annual rate through 2016. These increases in domestic demand for refractories will be centered in domestic steel production, which is predicted to increase over the next three years. In 2011, sales of refractories to iron and steelmakers totaled $990 million, representing 45 percent of all refractory sales. After declines in domestic steel production that started with the 2008 global recession, US steel manufacturing and associated refractory demand is forecast now to rise through 2016.